


on a list of miracles (that i might have you)

by w_anderingheart



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Discussions of Dimitri's mental health, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mutual Pining, Post-Time Skip, also added "there is only one bed" trope bc thats always /chefs kiss/, bc im trash for that trope apparently lmao idk its just so fun to write, felix being moody but he just has a crush uwu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25121251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_anderingheart/pseuds/w_anderingheart
Summary: Felix runs a hand through the short strands of his hair, frustrated. “You,” he growls, “don’t get to decide what people are fighting for.” Something in Felix’s voice makes Dimitri look at him again, and a flare goes off in Felix’s chest, like the heat of two flint stones sparking against each other. “You—have no fucking clue.”The memory comes back to Felix, rises up to the surface, against his will — the hours after the Battle at Garreg Mach as he rode back to Fraldarius alone.Dimitri is still studying him. “You cut your hair,” he says hoarsely, and a pit opens up inside of Felix’s stomach. A strange light passes through Dimitri’s eye. Felix doesn’t know if the boar is looking at him or through him. Then he whispers, “Are you a different man now too, Felix?”___Felix thinks the middle of a war is the worst time to be fake-married to your childhood friend, current enemy, and future King. (Alternatively: a snapshot of post-time skip Dimitri and Felix in a slightly reimagined Azure Moon run.)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 14
Kudos: 133





	1. from the ashes.

**Author's Note:**

> hi yes im late to the party but i wrote canon-compliant dimilix angst-fluff bc im re-playing azure moon and i just have a lot of feelings ok. (some spoilers for blue lions route ofc so read at ur own risk)
> 
> \+ content warnings: non-graphic mentions of violence/killing; discussions of dimitri’s mental health (felix uses some abrasive language towards/about dimitri)
> 
> \+ this was supposed to be a short angsty drabble about felix chopping his hair bc he’s grieving but then it turned into fluff at some point (and became 17k) idk ???
> 
> \+ “reimagined” AM-route just means i shuffled plot details/timelines around a bit. it doesn’t match canon completely but should still be easy to follow
> 
> \+ i am new-ish to fe3h twitter! come say hi [@fancyfraldarius](https://twitter.com/fancyfraldarius)

When he rides into Garreg Mach, the sky has opened up, giving way to the first sunlight Felix has seen in weeks. 

Faerghus never gets much sun at all, and the fur lining of his travelling cloak is too warm, this south. The heat makes him sweat, from the edges of his hairline, trickling past his ears, down into his neck. He can feel the sun beating down from above — too harsh, too insistent — and the sky turns a clear bright blue in the distance, as if riding towards a miracle. And Felix doesn’t believe it. 

He doesn’t believe it when he sees Professor Byleth at the gates of what was once the Officer’s Academy, and for whatever small amount of time, his home.

He doesn’t believe it, still, as he enters the ruins of what was once the cathedral, finds his old classmates gathered around the rubble of the collapsed roof and smashed pews; as Annette spots him, cries, flings herself into his arms; or even as Sylvain shows up a minute later, takes him into a one-armed hug, smiling even as the old, gleeful light in his eyes is absent.

He doesn’t believe it — that Dimitri is alive. And that they have all gathered for some makeshift class reunion.

But then, a figure appears in the arches of the cathedral entrance. A hulking, shadow of a man, with ragged blond hair, darkened to the colour of sand, bangs falling into a single ice-blue eye, the other gone behind an eye patch.

Felix doesn’t recognize him — doesn’t _want_ to recognize him — but he is wearing Dimitri’s fur cloak and clutching Areadbhar in his fist, the faint glow of its curved blade like a torchlight in the distance.

Someone gasps quietly. But no one moves. 

Then, it’s Mercedes who speaks first. Maybe because when it comes to things like this, things off the battlefield that none of them were ever truly trained for, she has always been the bravest. “Oh, Dimitri…” she exhales, stepping towards him, her soft voice rippling through the tension, and making something deep inside Felix’s chest seize. _Dimitri—_

But the man in front of them… Dimitri would never snarl at Mercedes like this, a flash in his eyes like some dangerous animal, gripping his lance tighter. 

Battle instinct makes everyone jump forward, just the slightest. Even Ashe, the most demure of them all, locks his jaw, and Felix doesn’t miss the way his hand, subconsciously, disappears beneath his cloak, to the dagger Felix knows he keeps there. Sylvain reaches for Mercedes, and pulls her a step back by the elbow, as the professor moves to stand between them and Dimitri. She looks exactly the same as she’d looked that day, five years ago, when she’d disappeared at the Battle. It’s unnerving.

_Why are old ghosts rising from the dead?_ Felix wonders, as the sunlight above them moves and disappears behind a cloud.

He steals another glance at Dimitri. Supposedly, Dimitri. There was once a time in their lives where Felix could read him like a book. A time where Dimitri’s every thought, every shift of his mood, poured out of his face like a waterfall of colours that Felix could decipher just by the cadence of his laughs or the set of his lips.

Felix stares at the man holding Areadbhar now, and realizes there is nothing there but the blank, all-encompassing darkness of a night sky — cloudy, starless.

/ / /

Six months after Cornelia took control of Fhirdiad and Prince Dimitri was officially pronounced dead, Sylvain rode into Fraldarius to assist with planning “the war effort”, as everyone called it. Felix didn’t say that they were all fighting a losing war. That it was useless to keep holding onto hope, in the secret silence of their hearts, that Dimitri would rise from the ashes of the Battle at Garreg Mach or that Professor Byleth would materialize into thin air. He could tell his father was at least clinging to the former, for much longer than he should have been, and it made Felix sick to the stomach.

But now, five years later, both miracles have come true, like something straight from a dream sequence. Those first few months are strange as the monastery becomes home base once again and Felix moves back into his old dorm room. Professor Byleth seems to have — literally — materialized, and as she tries to explain why or how she has no memories since after the Battle, Felix frankly tunes it all out because it is difficult to follow, and he has no particular desire to make sense of it. The point is she is back, and maybe the war isn’t completely a lost cause anymore.

The Knights of Seiros return to Garreg Mach too, and Seteth rallies them all into war council. They begin planning the resistance with renewed spirits, and a real hope for loftier goals — recapturing Fhirdiad, recovering Rhea, marching on Enbarr. Dimitri does not attend meetings and no one pushes him on it.

“Where is the boar,” Felix finally states one day, before the professor can open her mouth and start the meeting for the week.

Seteth clears his throat. “As usual, we can fill Prince Dimitri in on the necessary details after—“

“If he’s the damned prince of anything, then he should _be_ here,” Felix interrupts. He meets Seteth’s harsh gaze and tries to unthaw, a fraction, as much as he is capable of. “Respectfully, Seteth, you are all coddling him. Treating him too preciously, and for what? Scared he’ll disappear again or behead someone in a fit of rage?” He clenches his fists under the table. “None of us have even _uttered_ Dedue’s name, for goddess’ sake.” 

He means this for everyone, but now he is looking at the professor as he speaks. She gives him a level look, infuriatingly impassive. “You’re all still talking about the boar like he’s some kind of leader. Like he’s still capable of reason, and we have to put him back on the throne. So if that’s the end of this great plan, then he should be here, fighting this damn war like the rest of us. And _not_ just on the battlefield.”

His classmates stare back at him in silence, a sombreness in their eyes.

“You’re right. We are missing someone very important in our ranks and it’s imperative we confirm whether Dedue is… alive. But Dimitri needs time,” Byleth replies calmly, and Felix wants to say that they have all given him _months_ of time. Too much time. And yet the boar still hardly speaks, hardly eats, and doesn’t let anyone get too close to him. As if the professor senses this, she continues, “We don’t know what he has endured in these five years, Felix, but it’s clear that it’s beyond what we ever imagined and… he is not the same person he was. To help him find his way back is our duty and, well, it’s going to take a while. We must be assertive, but patient.”

The tone in her words is final. “This is ridiculous,” Felix mutters. Perhaps he only means to say it in his head, but he ends up saying it aloud, and he doesn’t regret it.

/ / /

Dimitri is in the cathedral again. Professor Byleth sends Felix in her stead to relay this week’s war council details this time, and Felix scowls but doesn’t complain. (He can see in her face, given his comments earlier, that his maturity is being tested and he isn’t one to back down from a challenge.)

He finds the boar sitting in the dust and dirt of the ruins, beneath the collapsed roof, chin tilted up to the open sky. The sun rests gently on his gaunt cheekbones, and despite it all, Felix’s throat catches.

“Boar.”

Dimitri doesn’t move. Felix walks closer, as close as he dares to get, and rattles through the list of things Dimitri needs to know for the mission that month at the Great Bridge of Myrddin. Felix knows Dimitri can hear him. He doesn’t know if he is listening.

“You don’t get to miss war council anymore,” Felix finishes, irritated. Dimitri’s single eye is translucent in the sunlight. Empty, a million miles away. Something flares inside of Felix. White-hot anger, frustration. Or maybe something else. Something much more difficult for him to confront right now. 

Whatever it is, Felix pushes the feeling down, reaches for his sword, unsheathes it in a flash and points the tip just an inch from Dimitri’s chin.

Finally, the boar turns his gaze on him — just for a second, his eye meets Felix’s, glints with some flicker of life. Then he stares down at the blade, and his face goes dark again. “The professor and Seteth and everyone else might be okay with treating you like a child but I am not,” Felix explains, voice dipping low. “Next time, I will not be a fucking messenger hawk. If you want to keep joining battles, then you’ll come to the damn meetings.”

Dimitri studies Felix’s sword, sits forward so that the tip presses lightly against his skin. “It does not matter to me,” he grunts, “whatever _strategies_ the professor devises. I will be on the battlefield, doing what I must do for the dead.”

Felix scoffs. Now he is definitely pissed. “You arrogant—” he clenches his sword tighter, twirls it to the side, and instead lunges forward to press his arm against Dimitri’s neck. The professor said _patience_ , but Felix is tired of patience. “The dead are _gone,_ boar. You owe it to the people who are still here _— alive_. The people you left behind when you disappeared. You owe it to _them_ , to win this war,” he hisses. “And you cannot do that if you’re running onto the battlefield like a maniac and getting yourself killed.”

Felix knows Dimitri could kill him, if he truly wanted to. And yet, Felix doesn’t care. Doesn’t flinch as Dimitri grips Felix’s wrist, enough to make Felix’s hand turn white.

But maybe, stupidly (impossibly), a part of Felix imagines that Dimitri, even like this, even as a ghost of who he once was, would never…

“You speak as if you’re not one of them,” Dimitri says, low and quiet, a rumble in his throat. “Someone… I left behind. As you say.”

Felix’s eyes widen, and he tears his arm away. It comes free from Dimitri’s grip, only because he loosens it just in time. His blue eye is still a million miles away, glassy and dead, as he staresback at Felix, and Felix wonders if Dimitri even heard his own words as he spoke them.

Dimitri leaving Felix behind… Felix does not like to think of it that way anymore. He’s stopped thinking about the past, almost entirely, as a matter of self-preservation. And even if Dimitri had abandoned Felix, it was much earlier than the war. It was before the Officers’ Academy. The boar’s spirit left his body ages ago. The Dimitri that Felix knew, truly knew, disappeared with Glenn after Duscur.

“You have a room full of people, legions of soldiers that have decided, despite it all, to follow _you_ into battle. Fucking boar prince, dead for years, a shell of a person. But they are here, fighting under your flag.” Felix sheathes his sword. His wrist is aching but he ignores it. “And yet, you can’t even show up to a fucking _meeting_ for them.”

“I am not their leader,” Dimitri replies. Areadbhar is sitting at his side, and he rests his hand over it, absently. “No one is fighting this war for me. People are here for survival. And revenge.”

Felix runs a hand through the short strands of his hair, frustrated. It’s been years now that he’s kept his hair cropped short, cutting it himself every time it starts to brush his neck. But sometimes, somehow, he still forgets. “ _You_ ,” he growls, “don’t get to decide what people are fighting for.” Something in Felix’s voice makes Dimitri look at him again, and a flare goes off in Felix’s chest, like the heat of two flint stones sparking against each other. “You—have no _fucking_ clue.”

The memory comes back to Felix, rises up to the surface, against his will — the hours after the Battle at Garreg Mach as he rode back to Fraldarius alone. 

He shakes his head, as if to clear it from his mind forever.

Dimitri is still studying him. “You cut your hair,” he says hoarsely, and a pit opens up inside of Felix’s stomach. A strange light passes through Dimitri’s eye. Felix doesn’t know if the boar is looking at him or through him. Then he whispers, “Are you a different man now too, Felix?”

For a split second, Felix’s resolve almost melts. But then he turns on his heel, and walks out of the broken cathedral. Because he wants to lie and say that he _is_ a different man, has been for a long time, but he doesn’t trust himself to speak at all, lest the truth break free.

/ / /

It was Ingrid who had first cut Felix’s hair, the very first winter after the Battle at Garreg Mach. Dimitri had been pronounced dead for three weeks.

Winters in Faerghus were always unbearably frigid. Ingrid and Sylvain had come to Fraldarius at the behest of Rodrigue — “the war effort _something something something_ ”, his father’s letterto them had read — but Felix knew why they had really rode in. Because Felix had stopped writing them.

They went on a hunting trip that day, made a fire somewhere in the woods, shared a bottle of strong mead Sylvain had brought as a gift for Rodrigue from Gautier, but decided the three of them needed more. Felix didn’t usually drink. He didn’t like the way it dulled his senses and didn’t particularly understand the rush Sylvain got from it. But as he stared at his childhood friends, huddled together under a grey Faerghus sky, it felt clearer than it had ever been before — the old friend they were missing, and who would never return.

It pierced his chest in that moment, sharper and stronger than any wound he’d ever felt, and he chugged the mead like it was an elixir, trying to chase some magical feeling. It did not lift his spirits, but it did make the world slow down and the pain lull into an ache.

Sylvain was a cheerful drunk, Ingrid a sentimental one. She was telling a story, something from their childhood. Something about playing hide-and-seek in the royal palace in Fhirdiad, about chasing Sylvain around with Glenn on her heels, about not finding Dimitri and Felix for hours because the two of them had been so small back then, hidden so well behind a large tapestry in the ballroom. And when she did finally find them, she saw Dimitri had taken to braiding an elegant silk string, pulled loose from his robe, into Felix’s hair.

“I remember how much he loved playing with your hair. You guys were inseparable,” Ingrid had said, laughing white puffs into the cold air. “It was—it was like you forgot we were playing hide-and-seek at all. Seems like forever ago… that you guys were so…”

It was a happy memory. Sylvain grinned, flushed in the cheeks, as Ingrid told it. Felix choked back the sting in his eyes. Then he fell forward, hunching his shoulders and hid behind the long, loose strands of his bangs.

The memory was so vivid, when Ingrid recounted it like that. Felix could almost feel it again, the warmth of Dimitri’s finger tips as they brushed his neck, of his breath when he laughed at something Felix had said…

A few hours later, the alcohol wore off, and the ache in Felix’s chest was still there. They rode back to the Fraldarius castle in silence, and after they’d put the horses back in their stables, Felix fished out a clean pair of scissors from a nearby toolbox and thrust it into Ingrid’s hands.

“Do me a favour?” he’d said quietly, forcing himself to meet Ingrid’s eyes, maybe so she’d know he was serious.

She stared at the scissors. Felix sat at the workbench, tied the string free, and his hair fell loose across his shoulders. She came up behind him, a minute later.

“Felix. Are you sure?” she asked. Her eyes were rimmed red, but she didn’t cry.

“Yes.”

It was the coldest winter Felix had ever lived through.


	2. begin again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Good,” Professor Byleth nods.
> 
> Sylvain bursts out laughing. “Good?” he snickers. “They’re the most miserable ‘married couple’ I’ve ever seen.”

A third miracle happens at the Great Bridge of Myrddin.

When Dedue returns to them, it breaks through the tension in their team, and the professor seizes the moment — finally — to talk to the boar. This time, somehow, it makes a difference. The mood at the monastery lifts. Dimitri gradually stops growling at people, until one week, Felix walks into war council and Dimitri is there, beside the professor, with Dedue right next to him.

“As I’m sure you’re all aware, with our ranks growing, ensuring a steady flow of income is important now more than ever,” Professor Byleth says once everyone has settled in. “I have been leading small battalions out of Garreg Mach to handle quick and well-paying excursions. However, I believe it would be more productive if any of you are willing to offer assistance in the coming months, as well. The war effort is ramping up and so are the expenses.”

She goes down a list of jobs that have been secured through the Church’s contacts — mostly rudimentary tasks like handling bandits in villages near the monastery, or along vital supply routes for the merchants. At the end of the meeting, she assigns groups of two or three to deal with each excursion. Felix waits for his placement, but she never calls his name, and war council concludes.

“Professor,” he catches her as the hall starts to disperse. The truth is, he wants any excuse to get out of the monastery these days. “Myself and the Fraldarius soldiers can be dispatched at any time.”

“Of course, Felix, I didn’t forget you,” she replies, gathering a stack of advanced faith magic tomes in her arms. “I have a… specific task for you, actually.” She looks over her shoulder, at the boar, who is still seated in his chair, speaking softly to Dedue. “Dimitri,” she calls. He lifts an eyebrow at her, curiously, then walks over to join them. Felix’s mouth twitches. He would like to scowl, but Dedue is watching him too closely for comfort and the last thing Felix wants to do is get himself back in Dedue’s bad books just for glaring at his prince.

“I’ve just spoken with Anna, down at the marketplace. She said there have been sightings of demonic beasts passing through Magdred Way and into the nearby villages. It’s been affecting key trade routes as well, so she’s informed me that the payment for this mission alone is triple the sum of any other assignment we’ve got this month. Quite a good price for a rather simple task and I don’t want to pass it up. Unfortunately, I will be much too busy to deal with it myself this month, so…” she smiles, adjusting the tomes in her arms, and glances at Dimitri. Then back at Felix. “You two are my strongest men.”

“ _What_ ,” Felix says, incredulously. An entire trip out to Magdred… just him and the boar— “Professor, you said it yourself. Something as simple as this, I can handle with my battalion. Or even alone, for goddess’ sake.”

She shakes her head, and Felix hates that look on her face. Decisive, unflinching. “It’s more than one beast by the sounds of it. I won’t risk sending anyone alone, and Magdred is also dangerously close to Empire territory. They are suspicious of any groups these days, especially a whole battalion. But with both your strength combined, I know I can safely entrust the pair of you.”

Felix can’t believe his ears. ‘ _The pair of them?’_ It’s like she’s forgotten that him and Dimitri are not, and have never been, capable of even rudimentary conversation in all the years she’s known them. “You want to send the boar—“ The professor gives him a deadly look, so he rolls his eyes and starts over. “It is far too risky to send _Dimitri_ off on a hunting trip to the Adrestrian border, professor.”

“But he has you,” she counters, which makes Felix’s neck flash hot. The speed and bluntness of her reply stuns him into a momentary silence, and in that split second pause, Dimitri cuts in.

“I would actually be grateful for a… change of pace,” he says pensively. And the way he’s… _pouting_ in thought almost reminds Felix of their school days. Almost. “We have been handling demonic beasts since we were students. I have confidence that the excursion will be a quick one.”

“That’s not the point,” Felix scoffs. “You could be recognized. Captured. Killed.” He knows as he says it that the likelihood of any of those things happening are actually quite low, but it doesn’t make the professor’s plan any less ridiculous. Just because the boar is capable of human speech again, doesn’t mean he’s ready to be treated like the same person he was at the academy.

No one knows Dimitri like Felix does. Not even Professor Byleth, as much as Felix respects her.

Sometimes, he almost resents the look on her face — always level, and steadfast, and knowing. As if she sees a deeper nature in all of them that Felix isn’t entirely convinced is real. And she is doing it again.

“Felix, I understand if you have prior commitments and are unable to accompany—“ she starts.

“No—” Felix groans. Why was everything so hard to _explain?_ “I _mean_ , the boar cannot be trusted to go off alone.” He swallows. “Or to be alone with anyone else.” _But me,_ he thinks silently.

He’s been reading Dimitri’s every move since he was a child, and even if he isn’t as strong as him in brute force, Felix is the only one that might have a shot at getting Dimitri under control, if he ever needed to. If it really came down to it.

Hopefully it wouldn’t.

“Great, then it sounds like it’s settled,” Professor Byleth smiles, like she’s won a game, then starts to walk past them. “Oh, but there’s one more thing.” She turns around suddenly. “You will both need fake names, of course. We can’t have you running around the border as Faerghus nobility. Or even as Seiros soldiers. It’s far too risky to align yourselves with either side of this war when you’re travelling. You’ll never know who you’ll run into.”

Felix grunts. “Fine. We’ll be mercs.”

She shakes her head. “No, no. You’ll need more of a cover story than that. With the increase in bandit activity since the war began, _everyone_ is calling themselves a mercenary these days. You’ll be interrogated and searched immediately,” she explains. Felix frowns. Dimitri stares back at her blankly. “You’ll never get through checkpoints without fancy paperwork.”

“So then, what shall we do?” Dimitri asks.

The professor is smiling again, and Felix gets nervous. “Well,” she replies, “there’s an easy solution for a travelling pair of two.”

/ / /

Felix spends most of the following week pretending that the professor has lost her fucking mind, because it certainly seems like she has. 

Her plan makes no sense. The sheer lunacy of her proposed lie sounds so impossible to fake that Felix wonders if it might as well be safer for him and Dimitri to set out as themselves. (At least that way, maybe they could just flash Areadbhar and scare off the guards at checkpoints until they let them though. The professor, of course, had dismissed this idea.)

“Run through your story,” she says insistently, gaze flitting between Felix and Dimitri at war council that week. “This is practice for when you leave tomorrow. Test how convincing you sound.” From across the table, Sylvain raises an eyebrow, and everyone else looks just as thoroughly confused. Felix huffs, crossing his arms.

“Um,” Dimitri starts, when it’s clear that Felix would rather die than respond. “M-my name is Gerard.” Someone snorts. (Felix doesn’t have to look up to know it’s definitely Sylvain.) Dimitri seems to waver, but the professor just smiles and motions for him to continue. He clears his throat. “I am travelling with my—husband, Simon.” Felix rolls his eyes. “We are from Galatea, but we are on our way to Rowe to visit Fe— _Simon’s_ sick brother. We… have been married three years, but we met when we were children.”

“How?” the professor prompts. “Simon?”

Felix sighs heavily. “Our mothers were friends,” he grunts. The professor waits for him to say more, so he grits his teeth and huffs out, “We grew up in the same town and our fathers were travelling merchants.”

“Good,” Professor Byleth nods.

Sylvain bursts out laughing. “Good?” he snickers. “They’re the most miserable _‘married couple’_ I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s enough, Sylvain,” the professor chastises lightly-heartedly, and Felix wills all the blood in his body not to rush into his cheeks. 

/ / /

It’s most of a day’s trip to reach the forests of Magdred Way, and with no one but the boar prince for company, Felix prays to Seiros and the goddess, and whatever other Saints exist, that maybe they could go slaughter those demonic beasts without ever having to run into anyone and — goddess forbid — have to stumble through their damn cover story.

Dimitri makes attempts at conversation, passing comments that Felix either ignores or provides mono-syllabic answers to. It is awkward, but at least it keeps Felix’s mind from going completely numb. (The truth, of course, that he would never say aloud, is that Dimitri’s presence always keeps him perfectly alert. For better or for worse.)

Felix watches the sky. He guesses it isn’t too far past mid-day when his horse starts to slow, head bowing as she snorts in discomfort.

“I suppose it is high time to get them a drink of water,” Dimitri observes, patting gently at the neck of his own stead. “There is a village not far from here, if I remember correctly. They’ll surely have a spot for our horses to rest up.” 

Felix notices Dimitri’s hair is shorter. Perhaps Mercedes or Annette had trimmed it for him yesterday. It’s still long enough that it hangs as low as his chin, but the top half has been neatly tied up and away from his face, no longer the unruly mess it had been when they’d first found him, months ago. 

He tears his gaze away. Before he’s caught staring. 

Dimitri has always had a good memory. It isn’t long until the village comes into view, and Felix rides ahead. As they get closer, he glances back at Dimitri. “Hide your relic,” he reminds him. Dimitri adjusts the cover over his travelling pack until the glow of Areadbhar is completely hidden.

There is a man stationed at the gates of the village entrance. He’s got a round belly and greying hair, and is holding a sorry excuse for a lance in one hand. It looks almost entirely made of wood, with a thin, sharpened tip.

“Afternoon, lads,” he stops them before they can ride past. It’s not a large village by the looks of it, but there’s a stable just past the gates. “Sorry I’m gonna have to stop ya here first.” He narrows his eyes at them, setting his shoulders straight. “Just gotta make sure we know who’s comin’ in and out of these parts. With the war and all, it’s a different time, you know.”

Thankfully, Dimitri speaks before Felix can even think about what to say. Princely manners. Maybe they are good for some things. “Of course, sir,” Dimitri bows his head, pauses for the shortest moment, as if trying to fumble for the cover story again. They had briefly agreed to avoid using it as they rode out of Garreg Mach, unless absolutely necessary. Dimitri seems to have this same thought as he says vaguely, “We are simple travellers, hoping we could stop at your stables just a moment. You see, our horses are very tired from a long journey.”

He smiles. That easy-going, charming smile that used to stun people momentarily into silence, blinking like they were looking into the sun. It used to work on Felix, once upon a time. Back when they were children, and things were different.

But it seems to work for half a second now too, because Felix catches himself staring at Dimitri for a moment longer than he’d like to admit. Or maybe it’s just been so long since Felix has seen Dimitri’s face open like that. Whatever it is, he shakes the thought away before it can take root, and spares a glance at the guard, who seems convinced, but hesitant.

Dimitri’s smile falters. The guard’s eyes flit between the two of them.

There is a shift in the air, on the man’s face, that Felix recognizes. It’s the same palpable tension he could smell on a battlefield. That split-second of change that requires absolute decisiveness, or else the fight would tilt completely out of his favour.

Perhaps this isn’t a battlefield, but it feels just like one as the man squints too long at Dimitri, so Felix grits his teeth and makes his move.

“My name is Simon,” he says quickly, before the man can open his mouth again. He dismounts his horse. Then, suppressing a sigh, he holds his arm out, towards Dimitri, who stares at him for a stupidly long time before he realizes that Felix is offering a hand to help him down. 

“This is my husband, Gerard,” Felix explains, and when Dimitri dismounts his horse, one hand clasped in Felix’s, it feels just as ridiculous as Felix imagined it would — this whole damn charade — but it’s also _working_. The guard’s face softens again. “We’ve been travelling many weeks from Galatea and trust me, we want nothing more than to pass through quickly,” Felix says, maybe a bit too sharply, his impatience melting through.

“What my husband means to say,” Dimitri continues quickly, “is that we will be out of your hair and on our way in no time.”

The guard hums. His gaze travels to the sheathed blade at Felix’s hip. “Fancy sword there, lad,” he comments.

“It’s not fancy,” Felix lies. (It’s reinforced silver, but he figures the man wouldn’t know either way.) “Hardly used. Just for emergencies.” He lifts an eyebrow, pointedly. “With the war and all.”

“Neither of us are much fighters, you see,” Dimitri adds, pressing in closer to Felix’s side. Their hands are still clasped, and this realization makes Felix’s neck suddenly feel very, very hot. But he doesn’t let go. For some reason, it’s making the lie seem more convincing, despite how ridiculously _massive_ and broad-shouldered Dimitri is. “But out on the roads, it can get dangerous, and I… I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my husband.” Dimitri does That Smile again. Felix’s head kind of spins for reasons he doesn’t want to think about right now. “You understand,” Dimitri says, earnestly.

The man sighs, and nods. “Well, go on then, lads.” He steps aside. “But you leave that sword with me. Can’t be takin’ my chances.” He holds his hand out, and Felix wants to protest.

Dimitri cuts in first. “Of course, sir,” he says, slipping an arm around Felix’s waist to unclasp the sword. Something in Felix’s chest stutters. He’s acutely (atrociously) aware of the warmth of Dimitri’s chest pressed against Felix’s back. “We’ll get it back. Don’t worry, Simon,” he adds, just under his breath, and his hand claps down warmly on Felix’s shoulder. He meets Felix’s gaze then, presses his lips together and tilts his head, as if pleading with Felix to cooperate. 

“Let’s just get in and out of here,” Felix mutters, and when they finally unlatch from one another to guide their horses into the village, Felix doesn’t think at all about the lingering warmth of Dimitri’s arm through the fabric of his cloak.

/ / /

When they reach the edge of Magdred Way, a dense fog has settled in. They stop at a small town at the very south of Gaspard territory, and when Felix dismounts and presents the appropriate documents to the guard, the man scrambles to his feet.

“Ah, o-of course…” He steps towards them, and Dimitri hangs his head lower. Felix doesn’t think it’s that necessary — Dimitri doesn’t look much like he used to — but he supposes they are quite close to Arianrhod. If they ever run into Cornelia’s men, it could spell disaster. “You two must be the mercenaries Anna informed us about.” The guard checks, then double-checks, Anna’s signature and then the Garreg Mach wax seal. He squints up at them again in the low light. “Just the two of you?” he asks, giving them a dubious look.

“Yes,” Felix replies, gruffly.

Dimitri clears his throat, but stays a step behind Felix. “Could we trouble you terribly for some torches?” he says, sounding just as infinitely patient as he has all day. “And, if it’s not too much to ask, we would like to leave our horses with your stablehand if that is alright?”

The guard straightens his shoulders. “Oh, er, yes! Right away.”

Dimitri discreetly slips Areadbhar out from its hiding spot before the guard walks their horses into the town. Felix sighs, rubs the fatigue out of his eyes, stares towards the forest. It’s usually foggy in this area, but at least they have seen worse. The amount of times the Professor had sent them out for training exercises here, back during their school days, is more than enough for Felix to be confident he knows the terrain almost as well as he knows every corridor of Garreg Mach.

“Rather nostalgic, isn’t it,” Dimitri says, beside him. He’s standing to Felix’s left, the eyepatch side in profile, so Felix can’t read the expression in his eye; just sees the soft, grim line of his mouth curled upwards. Not quite a smile. But something.

The guard returns quickly, two unlit torches in each hand. “I’d be happy to, er, light them for you, sirs—“

“No need,” Felix says, impatient, walking towards the thicket of trees. “Come on, boar. Let’s not get ourselves killed.”

Dimitri and his ridiculously long legs catch up with him quickly. They walk in silence for several minutes, following their ears more than their eyes. Felix is thankful for the amount of time Professor Byleth had spent giving him Assassin’s training as a student. Back then, he hadn’t been all that interested in stealth tactics, but the professor had insisted. It wasn’t until the war came that Felix finally appreciated its advantages; the way it had made him more patient and calculated in the field.

He’s surprised to see Dimitri has seemed to have fallen into the same battle instincts, stepping into pace with Felix wordlessly. Dimitri had always been a rather head-first fighter in their school days, always at the head of the pack. 

But Felix supposes that perhaps whatever time Dimitri had spent wandering alone, in the wilderness, has changed his instincts. Felix can tell he’s attuned to the darkness, like an animal with night vision, side stepping tree roots and stray branches with ease.

It starts with a low grumble. Then, a roar. They hear it in the distance, and halt at the same moment. Felix takes a breath, lights a small Fire spell into the tip of his torch. The beast comes into view, several feet ahead, its back turned away from them, feeding on the corpse of a dead bear.

Felix draws his blade, the heat of the torch flame tickling his skin.

/ / /

By the time they return, the sun has risen. They had wrestled with the idea of spending the night in the town, but after several gracious cups of coffee from the town’s mayor, they had decided to simply collect pay and ride back. At full speed, they had cut the trip down an hour or two.

The monastery is still half-asleep. At daybreak, there is only a handful of knights at the entrance, and the gatekeeper standing guard over an empty marketplace, the merchant shops not yet open for the day.

“Oh! ‘Morning Your Graces!” the gatekeeper salutes, a grin peeking out below his open helmet. “Good to see you back and well!”

Felix’s head is pounding — from the sun, from lack of sleep, from the gatekeeper’s incessant chirpiness. He grunts — Dimitri mutters some polite reply, but Felix doesn’t care to listen — and they walk through the entrance, towards the stairwell to the dormitories.

They’ve made it to the second floor corridor, outside of Felix’s room, when Dimitri coughs. Felix rolls his eyes. “I can _hear_ you thinking, boar,” he says tiredly. “If you wanna say something, just say it.”

“Well, I, ah…” Dimitri runs a hand through his hair, staring down at his gloved hands. “I suppose I’d just like to say thank you.”

Felix freezes. “For… what?”

“Putting up with me. And agreeing to the Professor’s plan, and all,” Dimitri mumbles through an exhale. He’s pink in the cheeks. From riding hours in the cold night. Of course. (Felix really, really needs sleep.) “I know this wasn’t easy for you… to travel at length. With me.”

“Shut up,” Felix says, instinctively. Dimitri’s eye widens, and Felix sighs in frustration, then shakes his head. _Goddess_ , he has a headache. “Fuck, I just mean—“ he tightens his fist around the doorknob of his bedroom. There are too many expressions on Dimitri’s face that Felix doesn’t want to parse through right now. Or ever. “It… it’s nothing. It wasn’t like it was particularly difficult.”

Dimitri raises an eyebrow at that. “The demonic beasts, or… the putting-up-with-me part?” he asks, tilting his head.

Felix flushes. He’d meant to be intentionally vague, and hoped Dimitri wouldn’t press. Such small mercies are apparently too much to ask for. “Both,” Felix concedes, not meeting his gaze, “I guess. Whatever.”

“Oh. Well, truthfully, that makes me quite… pleased to hear,” Dimitri smiles, and Felix briefly wonders if it was a mistake to look up at him, just then. It certainly feels like one, with the way Felix’s blood sings and his bones go light. (With fatigue. _Fatigue._ ) “Rest well, Felix.” Dimitri disappears into his room, Felix staring at the faint curl of his lips until the door shuts behind him.

/ / /

It takes about three days for Felix’s sleep cycle to normalize again. Being nocturnal for forty-eight hours hadn’t suited him well. He’d always found the monastery at night hauntingly loud in its silence. It didn’t help that the boar insisted on staying in his old student quarters, rather than the empty room of the archbishop, which meant Felix could hear every creak of Dimitri’s bed through their shared wall as he tossed and turned.

They were the kind of noises that, admittedly, used to lull Felix to sleep back then. Now, however, it makes Felix’s mind race — the smallest of sighs, jarring him awake — so last night he’d stalked to the infirmary and asked Manuela for a sleeping potion, which she’d graciously whipped up for him in half a minute.

And now, Felix is well-rested. Normal again, he tells himself, as he grips a training sword the following morning — its weight comforting and familiar.

His sparring session with Ingrid is going well. He falls into an easy rhythm, and Ingrid’s reliable, unrelenting speed has always been good practice for him. That is, until Sylvain intrudes, striding through the doors of the training grounds with a flourish and a troubling grin.

“Hello, _Simon,_ ” he greets cheerily, and Felix’s footwork stutters. He twists on his heel, narrowly side stepping the jab of Ingrid’s dull lance.

“Call me that again,” he glowers at Sylvain. “I dare you.”

Ingrid sighs and props up her lance against one of the stone pillars at the edge of the training grounds, then digs around in her pile of supplies for a clean towel. “You sure you want to ruffle Felix’s feathers when he’s got a sword in his hand?” she rolls her eyes, wiping the sweat off the back of her neck.

Sylvain throws his hands up in apology, but with a smile that shows he doesn’t mean it. “Well, anyways, I heard yours and Dimitri’s mission went well,” he says to Felix, striding over to Ingrid’s side. He moves to help her with her towel, but after a little warning glare, he chuckles and backs off.

“Of course it went well,” Felix mutters, mildly irritated that Sylvain has prematurely interrupted his sparring session.

“I know. I’m just more surprised that you didn’t kill Dima along the way,” Sylvain laughs. He grabs Ingrid’s discarded lance and twirls it experimentally.

Ingrid frowns, pushing her hair out of her face. “That’s not funny, Sylvain. Dimitri is still our King.”

“The boar is not anyone’s King until the war is over,” Felix says, matter-of-factly, and exchanges his training sword for a throwing knife. He tests the weight of it in his hand, before closing an eye and lining up a shot towards the row of practice dummies.

Ingrid sits down on the steps, clutching her knees to her chest. “By the way, you should really stop calling him that,” she muses. Felix’s eye twitches. “His Highness might not show it, but it could make him…”

Sylvain twirls the lance around his wrist, catching it as it spins up into his hand. It’s such a ridiculous, unnecessary gesture — all flashiness, no technique — and it reminds Felix, briefly, of the way Claude von Riegen used to twirl his arrows in the middle of their mock battles as students. Even then, as teenagers, they’d all been so cocky. So certain of themselves. None of them had been thinking about what it meant to truly be a soldier in a war — even Felix, no matter how much he’d thought he’d be ready.

“Lighten up, Ingrid. You know that’s just the Felix-equivalent of a pet name,” Sylvain teases, just as Felix hurls his knife at the wooden dummy. It lands at the base of the neck.

Felix’s irritation flares. “It is not a _pet n_ —“

Just then, the doors to the training grounds rumble open again and Dimitri appears on the other side. Felix curses and walks over to retrieve the throwing knife. 

“Um,” Dimitri greets awkwardly. “Sorry to interrupt…”

Sylvain beams. “You’re not interrupting, Dimitri.” He saunters over, circling his arms around his shoulders, like they’re kids again. “Don’t let Felix’s scowl scare you.” Felix sees a faint smile creep up on the edges of Ingrid’s lips.

“Right,” Dimitri coughs. Felix lines up another shot, lets the blade fly, and this time, it lands squarely in the dummy’s chest. “Well… I thought I’d let you know Professor Byleth has another assignment for us, Felix.”

Felix groans as he pulls the knife out of the dummy’s wooden heart. “Fucking great.”

/ / /

The assignment, as it turns out, requires them to journey past Arianrhod, towards Lake Teutates, to deal quickly and quietly with the spike in bandit activity troubling the nearby towns.

Felix is surprised the Professor trusts them with the task. Even Seteth tries to talk her out of it, but she insists that she is certain they’ll be fine — that for some reason, Felix and Dimitri, who can still barely stumble through a conversation, will be perfect for the mission.

“You’re our strongest men,” she says, in that tone of hers that dares him to argue. “You’re fast, discrete, and unlike _some_ people, I know you won’t take any, ah, questionable detours along the way.” (She glances at Sylvain across the hall, who’s making googly-eyes at one of the female knights in his battalion, and Felix rolls his eyes.)

So, that’s how Felix finds himself stuck with Dimitri once more, on a days-long trek north of the monastery. Felix, though he would never say it, realizes that Dimitri is a rather easy travel partner, and he knows the area around Garreg Mach and into Faerghus territory so well that he ends up navigating them both wordlessly. It’s clear that he’s also long given up trying to keep up small talk, but every so often, they would routinely practice their cover story, until the details were ironed into their brains.

“Good. Now you’ll never mess it up,” Felix mutters, eyeing the clouds to gauge the time. He guesses that it is early evening, and they’ll have to stop at an inn before nightfall.

“I suppose the Professor has crafted a very good lie for us,” Dimitri replies, looking over his shoulder to give Felix a small smile. “It’s rooted mostly in truth.”

“Hmm,” Felix grunts, “Expect for the part where we’re married.”

Dimitri hums quietly. “Well, yes. Except for that,” he says, and they don’t talk again until hours later, as they ride into the next closest town to sleep for the night.

Inside the inn, the man behind the counter looks between the two of them briefly before asking, “Two rooms? Ten silvers each.”

Felix starts to fish around for his coin purse, but then Dimitri steps up beside him. “Just one room, please,” he says, clasping a hand on Felix’s shoulder. Felix tenses underneath his touch for a half second before carefully rearranging his expression.

The innkeeper looks up from his paperwork swiftly, raising a bushy eyebrow, looking between the two of them too closely for Felix’s liking. “One room, two beds isn’t much of a bargain, lads, it’s just an extra few silvers for the separate rooms, I assure you—“

“It’s not that, sir,” Dimitri replies with a breathy exhale that Felix recognizes as one of his nervous chuckles. “A single bed is just fine. We’re married, you see.”

“ _Oh_ ,” the man sits up straighter, letting out a gruff laugh. “Well, in that case, I completely understand. Apologies.” He hands Felix a single door key, with a small wink, and Felix’s face burns hot all the way down the corridor and into their room.

“That was rather unnecessary of you, boar,” Felix huffs, once the door has shut behind them.

Dimitri shakes his head. “We have to keep up appearances, no matter what,” he insists, shrugging off his cloak, the lines of his back moving beneath his under-tunic. Felix looks away. “Especially out here, you’ll never know who you’ll run into. The professor said it was imperative we maintain the cover story wherever we go.” He pulls his gloves off, runs his fingers through the loose strands of his hair, smiling at Felix almost apologetically. “As a, um, married couple, we’re more harmless. We don’t stand out. You saw the way the man relaxed and brightened up. Like magic.”

“Sure. Magic.” Felix wants to laugh at the absurdity, but after a long day of travel, he’s too tired to form the thought into words. Instead he swipes the spare pillow, falls onto the floor, ignoring all of Dimitri’s protests for the bed and shuts his eyes. Sleep takes him quickly, mercifully.

/ / /

(Felix wakes up at sunrise. Not because he is uncomfortable, but because he is _too_ comfortable and he realizes that he is not on the hard, uneven wood floors, but on a soft mattress, with a blanket tucked up to his chin. He shoots up in bed, and finds Dimitri, snoring peacefully on the ground beside him, with nothing but his cloak draped across his torso.

Felix feels his heart hammer in his chest, a million thoughts flying through his mind — that at some point, Dimitri had carried him and Felix hadn’t even felt it, hadn’t even stirred; that for some reason, Felix’s body had betrayed him and decided in his subconscious that Dimitri’s touch was safe and not foreign; and that, despite… everything… Felix still feels a well of shame and guilt in the pit of his stomach as he stares at Dimitri, a literal King, curled up on the floor.

The last thought kicks Felix’s gut in a very unexpected way. He sighs, frustrated, and throws the covers back.

“Hey. Boar.”

Dimitri sniffs, but doesn’t rouse. Felix presses his lips together, glances out the window. The sky outside bleeds shades of soft orange, and he decides Dimitri could have one more hour of sleep.

And then, before he can talk himself out of it, Felix  snatches a pillow off the bed, lifts Dimitri’s head carefully, and nestles it underneath.)


	3. the living will have their tribute.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sleep with me,” Dimitri says suddenly, after a long pause, and when he sees the twisted expression on Felix’s face, he stutters, “I mean—ah, we can share. The bed.”

“State your names and purpose of travel.”

There is a Kingdom checkpoint an hour out of the town they’d just stayed in. It’s unmarked on their map, which means by the time they spot it, they’ve gotten too close to avoid it.

The guard in front of them now has an unruly beard that drowns out half his face, the set of his brows stern as he eyes Dimitri intently, up and down. 

Dimitri straightens his shoulders — his expression clear and confident. For a moment, Felix thinks it’s _too_ clear and confident, as a bit of Dimitri’s princely façade breaks through in a way that makes Felix wonder if, by some long-shot stroke of misfortune, the guard will realize who he is, no matter how much Dimitri has grown into his massive frame and roughened up over the years.

“We are Gerard and Simon of Galatea. We are travelling home from Rowe, where we were visiting a sick relative,” Dimitri replies. He sounds a bit like he’s reading out of a book, but then again, it’s not very much different than how Dimitri sounds usually — always a bit stiff and obliviously straightforward. Felix bites the inside of his cheek, studies the scrutinizing expression beneath the guard’s mane of a beard.

“You two…” the man says, eyes darting between them, “are related?”

“Oh,” Dimitri stutters, half a second, but it’s all it takes for a light to flare in the guard’s black eyes, “well, by—marriage.”

“Right… you have your documents, I presume?” the guard asks slowly. He squints his eyes at Felix, and Felix quickly rearranges his scowl. He hadn’t been scowling on purpose, of course, but each second feels longer than the next, and he’s starting to grow anxious. He bites the inside of his cheek as Dimitri hands the guard the fake papers Seteth had provided them. ( _“Use only if necessary,”_ he’d told them, _“But preferably, don’t.”_ Well, fuck.)

The guard glances over it once, then says, “I’m just going to ask you two to step aside for a moment.”

“Is there a problem?” Dimitri replies carefully, but Felix is already counting.

It’s no small checkpoint. Including the man in front of them, he counts at least six men up front — two other guards inspecting a family several feet away, and three guards posted up on watch towers. At the other side of the checkpoint, he also spots a makeshift hut, but not big enough to conceivably have more than two more men inside.

Felix’s jaw tenses. Potentially two against eight. The situation, if it came to that, seemed far from ideal, if these guards are also truly trained soldiers. 

And, even if they are under Cornelia’s orders, Felix doesn’t feel particularly ecstatic about having to raise arms against his own countrymen.

“There’s not a _problem_ , exactly. But you see, we’ve got a lot of fake people walking through these parts, these days.” The guard waves them to the side, and they have no choice but to follow along. For now. “It’s… protocol. Will you step off your horses for a moment?”

Dimitri shoots Felix a purposeful look, so Felix holds his tongue and complies. They watch, quietly, as the guard confers with two other men. One of them appears to be significantly older, perhaps closer to Felix’s father’s age, and he meets Felix’s gaze, then Dimitri’s. And doesn’t look away.

“If they search your horse—“ Felix’s whispers between gritted teeth.

Dimitri clutches Felix’s forearm — calm, but firm. “It’s okay… Simon,” he cuts him off. “Let’s just stay calm for now.” From the looks of it, Dimitri is still holding out hope for a peaceful conclusion, but Felix doesn’t like the way the older guard is staring at them — at Dimitri, specifically, as if he is waiting for the right memory to realign in his mind.

They couldn’t afford to wait around for that.

“Gerard,” Felix bites back, only in the off chance the guard could read his lips. “Don’t wait for them to recognize you. This might get bloody if they look at those papers too closely.” He looks down at Dimitri’s hand on his arm. It would look suspicious if he moved out of his touch, so he sets his jaw and tries not to think about their proximity. “Listen, I counted. Eight versus two, at most. It’s tough but—if we have to, get ready to grab Aread—“

“Simon, please.” This time, Dimitri tugs Felix in, towards him, and Felix’s brain momentarily short-circuits as their thighs brush, as Dimitri moves his other arm to press against the small of Felix’s back. “Let’s… not think like that, if we don’t have to.”

In a frenzy, Felix grasps for something to say, and ends up sputtering, frustratedly, “We—be _realistic,_ boar.”

This time, all three of the guards conferring turn to look at them. Felix curses inwardly. He should have watched his tone — and his tongue. For once, he’s regretting how easily the word slipped out. Though, maybe he’s more surprised that he hadn’t said it with much malice. Just instinct.

(He hears Sylvain’s stupid voice in his head, chuckling the words _pet name_ , and Felix wants to die.)

“Simon, love,” Dimitri says, and now he is matching Felix’s volume — or rather, being even louder — and suddenly, Felix feels dizzy, warm under the collar of his tunic. From the corner of his eye, he sees the guards are still watching them. More intently than ever.

_Oh_ , he realizes. 

The two of them are actually, literally, going to have to act their way out of this.

“I’m—I… apologize, Gerard,“ Felix coughs. He fucking sucks at this. He wishes the words could come as easily to him as it seems it does for Dimitri, but every time he opens his mouth for this charade, he can feel his temperature spike ten degrees. (By the end of this, he swears he’ll have a permanent fever.) “It’s… just been a long journey.”

“I know.” The corner of Dimitri’s mouth tugs upwards, and Felix can’t quite get himself to meet his gaze. He’s scared of what he’ll find there. The earnest kindness in Dimitri’s blue eye — the tenderness that Felix, for a long time, used to associate with Dimitri, and Dimitri alone. And Felix remembers all the years it took for him to manually detach himself from the fondness of that smile.

And above all, maybe, Felix is afraid if he sees it now once more, with Dimitri so close to him, touching him so gently, he will latch onto that gaze, and never be able to let it go again.

“When we’re home, we will rest for a long time. I will take care of you, I promise,” Dimitri says, lifting his hand to Felix’s face, slow and tentative, so that Felix has time to move away, if he wants to. (He doesn’t.) “Until then, let’s be patient, love.” He tucks back a loose strand of Felix’s hair, the roughness of his fingers grazing the shell of Felix’s ear, and Felix has no clue how Dimitri can say all those words without choking.

Dimitri’s smile widens, just a fraction. “You’ve let your hair grow long again. You stopped cutting it?”

Felix’s throat is thick, his tongue like cotton, so he just nods, and in the movement of his head, he unintentionally moves into the touch of Dimitri’s lingering hand.

“Good,” Dimitri says, so softly that Felix isn’t sure the guards can even hear them anymore. “I’ve always loved it long.” He moves in a bit closer, and there’s a question in the furrow of his brow. Felix doesn’t know what he’s going to do, only that Dimitri is leading this charade, and all Felix can do is follow.

“Do you trust me?” asks Dimitri, and the answer tumbles from Felix’s lips before his brain can even catch up.

“Yes.”

Dimitri’s calloused fingers move from Felix’s ear to his chin, tipping it upwards, and then he’s leaning in, pressing his rough lips to the corner of Felix’s mouth.

It lasts only a second, but the moment stretches on for ages. Felix’s skin burns so hot, he can feel himself swaying in place, steadied only by Dimitri’s hand on his back.

“Guards,” Dimitri calls, looking over at them as if he’s just remembered they’re there. “My husband doesn’t do well on these long journeys. I’d very much like to get him to the next town as soon as possible.” His voice is harder this time, steeling over with only the slightest bit of impatience. “Is there anything else I can do for you, to hasten the process?”

The three men exchange a look. An agreement seems to pass between them before the first guard walks back over to them, handing them their fake papers. “You can move along, lads.”

Dimitri’s smile comes back. “Thank you.”

Felix starts to move out of Dimitri’s grasp, eager to bury this entire fucking day in the deep recesses of his mind, but Dimitri is still holding him.

“Let me help you up,” he says, pulling Felix gently towards his horse, and Felix lets him because it feels like too much work to refuse, no matter how much the proximity is making him flush. (And maybe that’s a good thing for now, Felix tells himself. Part of Dimitri’s theatrics.)

Once the both of them are settled back into their saddles, they ride quickly out of the checkpoint, Felix trotting ahead stubbornly as soon as they’re out of view from the watch towers, and then he wills his heartbeat to steady.

/ / /

The sun has just disappeared for the evening behind the line of Lake Teutates, as Felix’s arrow hits the chest of the last bandit, and Dimitri pulls his spear free from a fresh corpse. His face is blank, impassive — perhaps even solemn — and Felix supposes that is better than the crazed glint he’d used to see, always tucked into the crevices of Dimitri’s face.

Felix himself hovers for a second over the body of the man he’s just struck, watching as the tension leaves his muscles and the life dims out of his eyes.

“Ready?” Dimitri’s voice calls from a few feet away, and Felix turns away wordlessly as they make their way to their horses.

Felix had stopped, years ago, considering himself religious. But as they ride towards the nearby town to collect pay and rest for the night, he finds his mind wandering without meaning to, reciting the Prayer for Lost Souls he’d learned as a child, repeating it five times in his head for each man he had killed today. It was only by consequence, not intention, that Felix had committed the prayer to memory, but even so, the words always seem to come to him, in moments like these.

Dimitri matches Felix’s pace, riding up alongside him, and when Felix spares him a side glance, he notices a blossoming dark spot above the hem of Dimitri’s tunic. “What…” Felix squints, then flits his gaze to Dimitri’s tense face, the hand at his torso. Stained red. “You’re _injured_.”

Dimitri sets his shoulders straight. “I am fine,” he grits his teeth, wincing, and Felix immediately pulls the reins on his horse. She makes a displeased noise beneath him, but obeys, and Felix dismounts quickly.

Dimitri frowns, stopping. “Felix, what are you—“

“You _idiot_ , why didn’t you tell me?” Felix demands, removing his gloves as he examines the wound up close.

“This is nothing, it can wait until we reach the town and collect pay,” Dimitri shakes his head, pressing his hand a bit closer to the cut, as if to hide it. “I am sure they will have a healer.”

“Stop,” Felix slaps his hand away. He’s no Faith mage, by any means, but the war had forced him to learn what he needed to survive. “We aren’t going anywhere until I tighten up the wound.” He reaches for the edge of Dimitri’s tunic, peeling it from the blood-soaked skin.

Dimitri, of all things, blushes. (And Felix doesn’t have time to think about that, but he definitely notices.) “This is unnecessary, Felix—“

“Shut up.”

He mutters a Heal spell a few times until he can feel the warmth of it coursing up through his body and into his palms. It’s weak at best — but he does it again, then again — and slowly, the raw skin at the folds of the wide gash start to pull together.

Several minutes later, it’s clear that’s the extent of what Felix’s limited magic can do, so he wipes his bloodied hands on his pants

“I didn’t know you had practice in white magic,” Dimitri says, as they continue on for another mile, towards town. “The extent of your knowledge is admirable.”

Felix grunts non-committally. “Basic white magic is a necessary skill in the middle of the war,” he mutters, then wrestles with the idea of scolding Dimitri about being reckless. But he studies the half-open wound at Dimitri’s abdomen again and decides against it. For now.

They collect pay from the town’s magistrate, who directs them to the inn and immediately sends for their town’s healer. Dimitri mumbles half-complaints the whole time, insisting that he feels perfectly fine, and that he “wouldn’t want to trouble anyone at this late hour”, but each time he opens his mouth, Felix glares at him until he stops talking.

The town healer is a tall, wiry man with curly brown hair and a sunny smile. He introduces himself as Micah, a practiced Faith mage of ten years, which sounds like a surprisingly long time considering he doesn’t appear to be much older than either of them. “And you are?” Micah asks them.

“Er—Gerard. And this is Simon,” Dimitri replies. “We apologize for disturbing you so late—“ he winces, laying down cautiously on the bed. He seems uncomfortable in such a vulnerable position, in front of a stranger, but Micah’s smile is warm and cheery.

“Nonsense. It’s my job to be disturbed at all hours,” the mage insists, rummaging through the vials in his open case.

Felix sits at the other side of the room to give him space, crossing his legs in the spare chair beside the window. He tries not to watch the mage with hawk eyes, but after a while, he gets restless and impatient and walks over to the bedside.

“How is he?” he asks.

“I’m fine, Simon,” Dimitri replies, for the hundredth time in the last hour. Felix is about to retort that he was asking the _healer_ , but Micah just shoots Felix one of those happy-go-lucky smiles.

“The wound is deep. But at a glance, I’ve seen much worse,” he says, reassuringly, then at Dimitri, “I will give you something to ease the pain first.” 

He hands a little vial to Dimitri, who drinks the pro-offered concoction. Sixty seconds later, his head rolls back.

Felix’s heart hammers. “What happened?”

“He’s fine, the concoction causes some drowsiness,” Micah replies. He lifts Dimitri’s tunic up, re-inspecting the wound. It doesn’t look much better than it had been when Felix touched it. “I suspect there is venom in the cut. The extraction will take a while. Maybe you should get some shut-eye yourself?”

This close, Felix can see that Micah has freckles. A light sprinkling of them collected like a constellation across his nose, with a splattering on his cheeks. His skin is a light caramel colour, and Felix wonders if Micah is part-Almyran, or maybe from Brigid.

As if he’s been caught staring, Micah’s smile widens, and Felix is startled by the directness of it. “I’ll… just wait downstairs,” Felix mumbles and leaves the room.

There is a bar on the main floor of the inn, down the corridor from the innkeeper’s desk, a moderately-sized space with a few raucous patrons tucked away in the alcoves of the booths.

Felix steps up into a barstool, and the bartender — a middle-aged man with spectacles and a salt-and-pepper hair — looks up from his newspaper.

“What’ll it be, lad?” the man asks, and Felix orders the tallest mug of ale they have.

He blames Sylvain for his newfound appreciation of alcohol. There was something Sylvain had said in one of his drunken stupors once — about craving numbness. About how it manifests to keep us sane. The body’s reaction to feeling too much.

Felix drinks one pint. Then another. Then his head swims, tilts. He’s not sure why he’s craving the numbness. He’s not sure what he’s feeling so much of, in the first place, that he wants to forget.

/ / /

An hour passes, or what feels like an hour. The bartender makes small talk with him. Felix is surprised, considering most Faerghans aren’t much for small talk. Maybe things are different here, in the south of the country, and Felix has to rally with utmost effort every brain cell he has to remember the fake details — Simon. Galatea. Coming from Rowe. Here with my husband. On our way home.

Eventually, mercifully, the bartender wanders away to deal with another patron, and then, Felix feels a tap on his shoulder.

He turns to see Micah, sunshine smile, glittery freckles and all. “Gerard is recovering well,” he says, sliding into the stool beside Felix. “He’s awake, if you want to check on him.”

“Oh, um. Thanks,” Felix murmurs, downing the rest of his ale. He’d hoped Dimitri would be knocked out cold so Felix wouldn’t have to have some useless argument about why Dimitri needs to sleep in the bed and not on a cold hard floor.

“You’re welcome,” Micah answers brightly. He’s too cheery for such an hour. It’s approaching midnight, if Felix were to guess. “You’re Simon, right?” he asks, crossing his legs, leaning closer.

“Uh,” Felix’s head pounds. “Yeah?”

“You don’t sound sure,” Micah smirks, eyebrow quirking. Felix — in a tipsy panic — looks startled, for a fraction of a second, until Micah chuckles. “I’m just teasing,” he adds. Felix can smell him from here. Something like rosemary and sugar. Sharp, but sweet. “Mind if I buy you a drink?”

Felix hears the words, but they don’t really compute through the thick wall of alcohol filtering up to his brain. “Er—what?”

“A drink,” Micah repeats, tilting his head to the side. His curls bounce as he laughs. “Hasn’t anyone bought you one before?”

“No,” Felix replies, honestly, brushing the hair back from his face. It’s long enough to tie up again, but the front strands are an awkward length that don’t quite tuck behind his ears yet. He fusses with the stray pieces as Micah studies him. “Why?”

The mage leans in closer, his knee knocking Felix’s thigh, and as his dark eyes turn playful, Felix realizes he recognizes that look. That expression. “Goddess,” Micah chuckles airily, just as Felix’s brain starts to catch up, “you pretty ones are always so dense.”

It’s the same look Felix sees all the time on Sylvain. Sometimes multiple times a day. Felix has just never been on the receiving end of it. So plainly. So intently. It’s disconcerting. “Oh,” is what Felix says.

Micah’s lips twitch, amused. “So, is that a yes?”

Felix runs his tongue along the roof of his mouth. His throat feels chalky and dry now. He grasps for the right words in the right order. “Uh, look—” he starts to say, but then he feels the firm press of a palm on his shoulder, and for some reason — somehow, even through the haziness clouding any coherent thoughts — Felix knows it is Dimitri’s touch before he even looks up.

“Simon,” Dimitri says, deep and low.

“Di—“ Felix starts, biting his tongue just a split second too late. Damn, ale. Micah’s eyebrow quirks. “ _Dear_ ,” Felix sputters out, and well, maybe the alcohol does it make it easier to say such things without wanting to die on the spot. He peers up, at Dimitri’s washed-out complexion, tired eye, and tense jaw. Maybe he’s still in pain, Felix guesses. “You should really be resting.”

“I was looking for you,” Dimitri replies earnestly. Always so earnestly. “Will you come back?” he asks, and Felix’s chest squeezes, like a fist around his heart, wringing his insides dry. Dimitri steps forward, pulling Felix closer to him. “It’s… difficult to sleep without you there. Come back with me?” he asks again, and the words ricochet in Felix’s head, like a voice in the depths of a cavernous well.

( _Come back with him._ Isn’t it obvious? Does it even need to be a question? Felix wants to say, but the words stay lodged in his throat, like the sour after-taste of his drink.)

“Oh. Master Micah,” Dimitri says, as if just noticing him. “Thank you again for your help. If you hadn’t come, my husband here would have been quite troublesome.”

It is only because Felix knows every shade of Dimitri’s voice that he can tell, for some reason, that Dimitri is using the same tone he uses for barely-suppressed impatience. Felix glances at him, curiously. Confused. Just an hour ago, he’d seemed ready to pay the mage their whole coin purse. Now, he’s eyeing the man as if he’s some kind of swindler.

“Ah. Husband,” Micah repeats stiffly, eyes wide as they go back and forth between the two of them. “Well, er, I was happy to help. Of course.”

Dimitri nods. “Perhaps you should go home and rest now. It’s late,” he says, polite but clipped short, and now Felix is _extremely_ confused. But there’s no time to dwell on it as Dimitri stalks off towards the stairwell, and Felix stands up to follow him.

“Um,” Felix pauses, glancing back at Micah awkwardly. He doesn’t know why he feels like he should apologize, but perhaps the ale has made his tongue loose. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.”

Micah rests his head into his hand, leaning against the counter of the bar. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he shrugs, then glances back at where Dimitri is waiting. “Your husband is clearly… very enamoured by you.”

Felix coughs. “Right… well…”

“Good night, Simon,” Micah chuckles, blissfully sparing Felix from having to say anything else, before he stands up from the bar and disappears out the door.

/ / /

“I swear to Sothis,” says Felix as they step back into their shared room, “if I wake up in the bed, with you on the floor again, I’ll reopen that damned wound myself.”

Dimitri is changing into his spare tunic, turned away from Felix, looking out the window into an inky black sky. His blond hair is a halo in the lamplight and as the silence stretches between them, Felix can only stare at the muscles shifting in his back as he lifts his shirt over his head.

“Sleep with me,” Dimitri says suddenly, after a long pause, and when he sees the twisted expression on Felix’s face, he stutters, “I mean—ah, we can share. The bed.”

Felix glances at the mattress, barely double the size of the small ones back in their dorm rooms. He looks back up at Dimitri’s hulking frame. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Felix scowls, turning his head so Dimitri can’t see the blush invading his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears.

“There’s plenty of room,” Dimitri insists, moving to sit tentatively at the edge of the bed. “I know I… generally make you uncomfortable, but—"

“Fine,” Felix huffs. He swallows whatever strange feeling is crawling up his throat and tells himself it is easier this way, than to try and reason with Dimitri when the latter has his mind all made up. “Whatever gets you to sleep faster.”

Felix chucks his shoes off, strips down to his undershirt, and climbs into the other side of the bed. He’s conscious of Dimitri’s gaze on him, but he ignores it as he pulls his hair loose from its tie. The full weight of his fatigue hits him now; he’s exhausted, half-intoxicated, and very grimy, and he can’t wait to get back to Garreg Mach tomorrow and sit in the bathhouse, undisturbed, for hours.

“What?” Felix asks pointedly, when he realizes Dimitri is still staring at him.

“N-nothing,” Dimitri runs his hand through his hair awkwardly, then settles under the sheets. “You know, I meant it when I said…” He rearranges the blanket so that it covers Felix too. “When I said it is difficult to sleep… without you near. I suppose it started back in the Academy, our rooms sharing a wall all those years. Perhaps I’d just gotten so used to it—” he stops suddenly, as if catching himself. “Apologies. I-I don’t mean to bring up such strange thoughts.” He tugs his eyepatch off his face, rests it next to his pillow and Felix remembers it’s the first time in years that he’s seen Dimitri’s whole face. The realization lights something inside of him — so brightly, so suddenly. 

“Thank you, anyways,” Dimitri murmurs.

“For what? Making sure my King doesn’t die from stupid bandits?” Felix scoffs. “Seriously. What a bland way to go. The history books would skip you entirely.”

Dimitri turns to look at him, a wrinkle in his brow. “ _Your_ King?” he repeats.

“I meant—“ _Shit_. Felix sighs. “I’m… a Fraldarius. You’re a Blaiddyd. What else is there to say?”

Dimitri’s shoulders fall and he reaches over to douse the oil lamp beside him. “Well, in any case, I want to thank you for… keeping me alive,” he says. The lamplight flickers, then disappears. “For… the duty you feel to… care about my life, in whatever fraction.” The room descends into darkness — nothing but the moonlight, their shadows, and Dimitri’s low, soft voice. Trembling. “These days, I am still learning how to value my life again, especially my own. That is what Professor Byleth tells me, at least… to honour the dead by honouring the living…”

Felix’s chest squeezes, and he realizes the ale isn’t working the way he’d thought it would. It doesn’t numb anything he’s feeling — only stretches him thin, pulls something deep within him and drags it out into the open. Into the pale, silver glow of the tiny room.

“Duty,” Felix says quietly, rolling onto his side so he doesn’t have to stare at the sloping lines of Dimitri’s profile. “That’s what you think.”

A pause. “What?” Dimitri’s breath hitches when he speaks, or maybe it’s Felix’s imagination.

“Micah was right,” murmurs Felix. “The pretty ones _are_ dense.”

He nestles into his pillow, soft against his warm skin, and when he closes his eyes, he’s half-way to slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one of my favourite lines in the game is dimitri's: "the dead will have their tribute" during the post-time skip gronder field cut scene. though it wouldn't fit into this fic, i still wanted to play around with the line so thats where the chapter title comes from.
> 
> and i like to imagine, in this fic, byleth is giving dimitri lots of great counselling and therapy :))


	4. only you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wait,” Felix tenses, the night of their last mission coming back to him in disjointed fragments. “That night… you were… _jealous?_ ”

Riding back to the monastery with a hangover proves to be an irritating endeavour. They leave at daybreak, stop only twice along the way, and arrive at the gates of Garreg Mach by evening. Felix is eager for a bath, leaving his horse with the stable hand before escaping to his room for fresh clothes.

There is a lot for their army to prepare in the coming months, so Felix isn’t surprised that he doesn’t see Dimitri for days afterwards, other than passing glances at him across the dining hall, or in the courtyard where Felix often sees him drinking tea with the Professor, or Mercedes. 

Felix is glad he has time to get into the right headspace again, falling back into his training routine, sleeping early, waking up early, and most importantly, staying far away from alcohol.

At dinner later that week, he eats with his old classmates, and that too, in its own way, makes him feel normal again.

“I saw yours and Dima’s haul in Seteth’s office,” Sylvain says through a mouthful of food. “Looked like a tall stack of bullions. Must’ve been a serious mission.”

Ingrid frowns disapprovingly at Sylvain’s table manners and tosses a napkin, square at his face. “I’m glad you two are getting along again. Or, well, tolerating each other again?” she mutters, eyeing Felix reluctantly.

Felix stabs his fork into his steak. “It’s a job. We go, we do it, we come back. It’s not like we have to be chummy in the slightest.”

“Right,” Sylvain nods, smugly, “you just have to be _married_.”

(Someone chuckles under their breath, and Felix has a suspicious feeling it might have been Ashe, who’s sitting at the end of their table, across from Dedue. Felix feels mildly betrayed that Ashe, of all people, would indulge Sylvain like this.)

“Well, _I_ think His Highness is doing much better in general. Right?” Annette chirps, leaning forward in her chair excitedly. “He’s even been drinking tea with Mercie all the time now! Really makes up for all the moody growling he did at her before.”

Ingrid’s eyebrow’s shoot up, and she twirls her fork, looking awfully pensive. “You know… I overheard the lords yesterday talking about pressuring His Highness to find a Queen before the end of the war,” she says. “You don’t think…?” 

Annette’s jaw drops. She leans forward so closely that the ends of her orange hair graze her vegetables. “There’s no way,” she gasps. “Or… is there? I mean, both Mercie and Dimitri aren’t eating with us…”

“But I didn’t realize they even liked each other like that,” Ashe chimes in. He looks up at Dedue.(The whole table looks up at Dedue. If anyone would know, it would be him.) “ _Do_ they?”

“Perhaps they like each other… just enough,” Dedue answers, eventually. “I do not claim to know His Highness’ every thought, of course.”

Felix swallows the last of his food down with a big gulp of water, then stands up so suddenly his cutlery clatters against his plate.

Sylvain glances over. “Done already, Felix?” he asks. 

Ingrid is watching him now, and Felix doesn’t know what she sees on his face that makes her eyes go soft in that moment, but her expression makes his stomach churn, so he stares at the table instead.

“I’ll be in the sauna,” he mutters. “Do _not_ bother me unless Edelgard shows up at our doorstep.”

On his way out of the dining hall, he sees two blond heads at the edge of the fishing dock, sitting side by side as their toes graze the water. 

Just as he’s rushing down the steps, Mercedes looks over and spots him, waves happily, with an open, sweet smile. Felix thinks he has a stomach ache. Maybe he ate too much.

He lifts his hand back in acknowledgement, but he’s already turned away.

/ / /

That night, as Felix makes his way from the training grounds, back to his room, he spots the doors of the old Blue Lions classroom wide open. He makes his way over, curiously. Of all the areas that have remained untouched in the last five years, the classrooms were one of them. The reality of what it meant to be at war and to face old classmates on the battlefield had hit them all after their fight at Gronder Field, and now no one was very eager to reminisce about their Academy days. Least of all Felix, and even less so, Dimitri.

Or so Felix had thought. It’s well into the early hours of the morning now, but Felix is surprised when he peers into the classroom and finds Dimitri staring out at the window behind Professor Byleth’s old podium.

“What are you doing here?” Felix asks, voice loud in the silence, and Dimitri startles and turns around.

“I… couldn’t sleep,” he replies. He’s dressed in his Great Lord attire, minus the armour he usually wore into battle, and Felix wonders if he’s even slept at all. “Well, also, I was looking for you,” Dimitri adds, sheepishly. “I figured you might be training at this hour, but I couldn’t yet bring myself to disrupt you…”

It dawns on Felix that Dimitri had probably been lurking in the classroom, trying to talk himself into seeing Felix at all, and Felix can imagine Dimitri pacing nervously in circles, wrestling with the most basic of greetings. The thought almost makes Felix… want to laugh. But instead, his body betrays him and he flushes, asking, “Why?”

“I wanted to apologize, actually.” Dimitri rubs the back of his neck.

“What _now_?” Felix rolls his eyes, walking across the room to lean against one of the desks in front of the dusty chalkboard. “Whatever it is, boar, I can assure you I don’t care.”

Dimitri walks around the podium, slowly, and if Felix were to squint, he thinks he sees the tips of the boar’s ears turn pink. But in the dark, the goddess was always playing tricks on him. “I have come to realize that in retrospect,” Dimitri coughs, “my… _advances_ towards you on our last mission were quite direct, and did not have your, ah, explicit permission.”

Felix blinks at him, blood rising into his cheeks against his will. Even in all his vagueness, Felix still knows what Dimitri means. The kiss. The touches. The sweet… empty words. 

“We did what we had to do,” Felix shakes his head. “And if I…” he casts a sideways glance so he doesn’t have to watch the furrow of Dimitri’s brow, the earnest pout of his lips. “ _If_ I truly, er, disliked it, I would have said so, boar.”

Dimitri lets out a breath, relief flooding into his voice. “I am glad to hear that, Felix,” he says. “To be frank, it has plagued me terribly, thinking I’d subjected you to an uncomfortable situation.”

Felix folds his arms across his chest, pushing the words out like he’s trying to hurl himself, desperately, to the end of this conversation. “It was just a kiss, Dimitri,” he sighs and stands up from the table.

“Oh,” Dimitri’s lower lip juts out, his pout deepening, “but still, I am sorry if it caused you any displeasure—“

Felix can feel it again — that familiar squeeze of his chest. Like a slow burn, settling into his lungs from a long sprint. “I don’t get it,” he says quietly, closing his eyes, shaking his head. The room shrinks around him until he isn’t sure he can breathe. The insistence in Dimitri’s voice, the assertion of his apology, the acknowledgement of the _wrongness_ of them together — even in its falseness — cuts into Felix like the slow, dreadful push of a knife into an open wound.

The air around him stills. And Felix wonders: “Are you mocking me now, boar?” he asks, plainly, his voice breaking.

Dimitri’s face crumbles into a swirl of shock, and then, confusion. “Felix,” he says, stepping forward all of a sudden so that he’s right in front of him. Just an arm’s reach away. “Felix, what do you mean? I would never mock you—“

Felix looks up at him; has to crane his neck to meet his gaze — and he reminds himself for the first time in a long time just how much taller Dimitri is. How much he’s grown into his stupidly long limbs and wide shoulders. Felix reminds himself that it has, at the end of the day, for years and years, always been like this: Felix, looking up — awestruck, hopeless, longing. Wanting Dimitri, and giving him up, all in the same moment.

“You’re telling me, that you don’t know?” Felix scoffs, disbelieving. Hasn’t it been obvious? Even though they’ve never breathed the words aloud, he thinks, hasn’t it always been the unspoken certainty between them? “That I’ve been in love you since we were children?” he barrels on, breathless. “That when I… when I’d thought you’d _died_ after the Battle, I didn’t feel _left behind_ by you, Dimitri, I felt betrayed.” His knees are trembling now so he falls back into the table again, and Dimitri half-raises an arm as if to steady him, but Felix shakes his head. “I felt betrayed by life, by the goddess herself, that she would…” he exhales, contemplating the words for a second — the weight of the truth so loud like a thud in the room — but he says them, anyway. “That she would take you away from me.”

He steals a glance at Dimitri, afraid of what he’ll find there. Repulsion, disgust, maybe pity. But when he looks up, Dimitri’s face is nothing but blank shock. “Felix—“

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Felix winces. He’ll regret all of this when the sun comes up, but by then, he’s decided, he’ll go back to avoiding Dimitri like the plague, so it doesn’t matter. “Let’s forget about it. Forever.”

Of all the things Felix thinks Dimitri is going to do in the long stretch of silence that follows, the last thing he expects is Dimitri’s large palms coming up to bracket Felix’s arms. Then, he whispers, “I can’t forget it, Felix. Not any of it,” stepping so close now their bodies might brush, “and in truth, I do not want to.” Through his shirt, Felix feels the heat of Dimitri’s skin, warm and tender, and the classroom starts to spin. “I was going to apologize to you, for being selfish.” 

Felix blinks. “Selfish?”

Dimitri’s mouth twists, tentatively, into something like a smile. “For taking advantage of the situation to… love you. Openly. The way I’ve always wanted to,” he admits, in a single, rushed breath. “I felt selfish for how much I liked it, thinking you’d resented me so. And I truly never imagined, never _allowed_ myself to imagine, that you would feel the same for me.” His hand moves from Felix’s arm, slowly, as if in permission. Felix doesn’t move, just waits, heartbeat pounding in his ears, and after a moment, Dimitri’s palm cups the side of Felix’s face. “I liked kissing you, and touching you, and… taking you away from a pretty mage trying to flirt his way into your pants.”

“Wait,” Felix tenses, the night of their last mission coming back to him in disjointed fragments. “That night… you were… _jealous_?” The idea hadn’t crossed his mind, not in the slightest, but when he puts the pieces back together, the whole night aligns itself in a way Felix had never realized — a feeling, he’d never dared to hope for before.

“Of course I was,” Dimitri says, thumb and forefinger stroking Felix’s chin so delicately. So naturally, as if on reflex. His face darkens. “He was very handsome, and he was very interested in you. And I very much wanted to rip his head off his shoulders.”

A laugh almost tumbles out of Felix’s throat, incredulous, but it ends up sounding more like a cough. He can feel himself turning into Dimitri’s touch, the brush of his King’s rough skin on his cheek, making Felix dizzy. “You’re an idiot, boar,” is all he can manage to say before Dimitri wraps his arms around Felix’s waist and presses their bodies flush together.

The moon shifts in the sky, through the window, elongating their shadows across the floor as they melt into one another.

Dimitri whispers, “Would it be so unbecoming of me to ask you if I might kiss you again?”

“It would,” Felix replies, heart galloping as if trying to escape his own chest, but he’s already half-way to Dimitri’s smiling mouth.

/ / /

They retake Fhirdiad and victory seems, suddenly, like a light at the end of the tunnel that they can finally see. At next month’s war council, Dimitri is more present in the strategy planning than he’s ever been before, and when Professor Byleth ends the session for that week, spirits are palpably high.

“Actually, while we’re all here, there is one more matter of business I’d like to discuss,” Seteth raises his arm and everyone settles back into their seats — Sylvain, frowning, as his stomach grumbles audibly. Ingrid rolls her eyes. “Dimitri. The lords of Faerghus, as I’m sure you know, would like to hear more about your… long-term plans, once you retake the throne.”

The Professor is surprisingly quick to jump in, folding her hands in her lap, and looking as close as she gets to impatience. “I am sure Dimitri can worry about producing baby Dimitris, _after_ we win the war,” she says, so plainly it makes Annette’s jaw drop, Sylvain snicker, and everyone else shift uncomfortably in their chairs. Felix sees her share a look with Dimitri before turning to Seteth. “On our list of priorities, this is very much at the bottom.”

Seteth takes a long, deep breath. “I understand that. But Faerghan lords are very traditional, Byleth,” he counters. “I do not disagree with you, trust me — I have been doing my best to reassure them, but there are some things they feel very strongly about.”

Everyone glances at Dimitri, sitting to the right of the Professor. He fusses for a second with his eyepatch. Colour rises in his cheeks.

“I will deal with the lords,” he says, eventually. 

Seteth clears his throat. “You know, marriage… especially among the nobility… is quite often handled as more of a, ah, business arrangement,” he adds, carefully. “If… that is something you’d want to explore.”

This time, Dimitri replies quickly, his voice hardening. “It is not.”

“Well,” Seteth’s eyebrows shoot up, “I’m sure the lords can help you find someone suitable and to your liking.”

Dimitri stands up, chair scraping loudly against the stone floors, echoing off the high ceilings. “I already have someone suitable and to my liking,” he replies. “Is that all, then?”

The room shares silent, confused, startled glances. Sylvain and Ingrid seem to have an entire conversation with their eyes before they both look at Felix at the same time. 

Professor Byleth jumps up from her seat too. “That’s all,” she confirms, and everyone floods out of the room and into the halls of the monastery, the knights congregating quickly, no doubt to gossip to the rest of the monastery staff.

Felix rushes downstairs himself, eager for fresh air and to avoid anyone hounding him with questions of _who is it!_ and _did you know!_ , which he can already see Dedue being subjected to when he passes him on his way to the pond.

It’s been a while since Felix has gone fishing. He’ll be on kitchen duty tomorrow, so he decides to buy fresh bait from the marketplace before settling on the dock and casting out his fishing line. Then he stares out at the still waters, trying not to feel so nauseous.

He always knew it would be like this, of course. Even in the impossible reality that he finds himself in — that Dimitri might love him, too — Felix isn’t deluded enough to think that it could ever be that easy. Dimitri, after all, is a King.

_His_ King. Felix has always known he’d serve Dimitri as an advisor, no matter what. And the best advice, objectively, is to keep the lords satisfied.

“Felix.”

He studies the surface of the grey-blue waters. “Has Mercedes agreed already?” he says.

Dimitri is quiet, but when Felix turns around, he gives Felix a bemused look. “Agreed? To what?” Dimitri asks.

Felix rolls his eyes and stands up. The fish are shy today. Maybe he’ll have to try again tomorrow morning. “Your proposal, _boar_.”

“I’m…” Dimitri tilts his head to the side, “afraid I don’t follow.” He walks down the length of the dock, closer to the edge, where Felix pulls his fishing line out of the pond. “Hang on, you certainly can’t mean…” Dimitri’s eye widens, almost comically, “ _Marriage_ proposal?”

“What else would I mean?” Felix scowls.

“Felix, you truly—“ And now, Dimitri is laughing, deep and full, from the bottom of his gut. It rings so loud, pure, and Felix is reminded how much he misses the sound of it. How much he loves it. The way it commands everyone’s attention, like the pull of the sun to planets in its orbit. A group of knights, sitting on the steps of the dining hall, look over at them curiously. 

“Where in the _world_ did you get that idea?” Dimitri presses, shaking his head.

Felix guffaws. “You said…” his brows furrow, pulling his unused bait off the hook of the fishing line. “In war council today. You told Seteth you’d already, uh, found… someone… _suitable_.” He crosses his arms in an attempt to look Unbothered and Perfectly Calm. “And to your liking.”

“I must admit, I am still very confused, Felix,” Dimitri mutters.

“What’s there to be confused about? You were spending all your time with Mercedes this week, and I assumed you—“ It takes a great deal of effort for Felix to shrug. And then he heaves a sigh, willing his cheeks not to blush in that way he can never control when Dimitri is looking at him so intensely. “Anyways, as your future advisor, I…. approve,” Felix murmurs. He runs through all the reasons in his head. “You know her well. We know we can trust her. She is kind and well-spoken, and she does have a Crest, which the lords will like. Plus, she’s from the Empire, so that could be useful, politically.”

He bends down to buckle the lid of the bait bucket closed, squaring his shoulders as he stands back up. He avoids Dimitri’s gaze, pointedly, but then, Dimitri steps forward, tips Felix’s chin up with his fingers, just like he had that night in the classroom.

Except now, it’s in the middle of the day, in one of the most public spots in the entire monastery and Felix’s heart leaps, looking around, frantically.

“ _Boar—_ “

“How could you still think,” Dimitri murmurs, his arm circling Felix’s waist, palm resting at the small of Felix’s back, “after everything I’ve already told you, after all this time,” his mouth softens into a smile — that smile, the one Felix knows so well, shattering his frail glass defences every time, “that I would choose anyone but you to be by my side?”

The words don’t quite register at first. “W-what—“ Felix stutters out, “what are you _saying_ , exactly?”

“Well, I intended to ask you this after we’ve marched on Enbarr, but I suppose since we’re on the topic, now is fine too.” It takes half a mind for Felix to remember anyone could walk by and see them, that people are no doubt _already_ seeing them, and that it would be very difficult — if not, impossible — to explain their position right now. Even more impossible as Dimitri licks his lips, and slowly, purposefully, says, “I’m asking if you, Felix Hugo Fraldarius, will accept my marriage proposal?”

Felix’s jaw drops through the floor and into the water beneath them. “Are you _insane_?” he half-screams. From the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees the merchants by the fish stall staring at them, but he can’t remember to care when all Dimitri does is chuckle, while Felix is Losing His Mind.

“Actually, Professor Byleth says I am the most sane I have been in a very long time,” Dimitri says, so casually, as if talking about the weather or the dinner menu for the day, “and that marrying the man I love might be good for my mental well-being. Her exact words.”

What. “She _knows_?”

Dimitri shrugs. “I only told her I was in love with someone. She somehow knew it was you,” he replies. “In fact, you know, she said that’s why she put us together on missions. Because she knew we’d never let each other die.”

_Of course she did,_ Felix thinks incredulously. And for some insane, crazy reason, he imagines telling his father about this. He imagines crawling into bed at the end of every day in the palace in Fhirdiad, right next to Dimitri, like that night in the inn. He imagines holding Dimitri, knowing he’ll never have to let go because Dimitri would be… his.

It seems impossible. It _is_ impossible. And yet, Felix stares into the clear-blue of Dimitri’s gaze and wonders.

“No one will ever approve of this,” he says flatly.

Dimitri’s smile turns into a grin. There’s a softness to his gaze, a light warmth — like a white, Faerghan sun peeking behind grey clouds — and Felix wonders, all of a sudden, if that has always been there, and he has just never noticed. That thought too, floods Felix’s chest full, a rush of heat into his cheeks and into his heart. 

“Is it too naive of me to say I don’t care,” Dimitri replies, simply, his breath soft against Felix’s mouth, as he reaches up to brush a strand of Felix’s hair behind his ear, “that I only want you, and that I will only _ever_ want you?”

The answer to that is so obvious, it feels almost useless to answer. “Yes,” Felix says anyways, because as Dimitri leans in to kiss him — right there, out in the open, under a clear, sunny sky — Felix has never been so glad to realize he is just as naive, too.

/ / /

**[bonus scene]**

“Why does it feel as though everyone is staring at us?” Dimitri says, during dinner. He’s sliding half his food onto Felix’s plate because he’s full, and Felix is morbidly embarrassed at how much their habits around each other are already changing. In front of the whole monastery and their friends, no less. “Have I done something wrong? My Knights in the Lion Corps have been muttering things back and forth all day.”

Sylvain munches loudly on his mashed potatoes. “Oh, I dunno,” he snorts, “maybe it’s because you and Felix were making out at the fishing docks this afternoon and half the monastery is in a frenzy about it?”

Felix glowers at his best friend, and sinks lower into his chair. It’s been like this all day and Felix already wants to die. He supposes he never imagined that this is the reality of what it would be like to be… involved, publicly, with Dimitri.

“I wish they didn’t have to make such a fuss,” Dimitri frowns, chewing his steak carefully. “Whenever _you’re_ courting someone, Sylvain, no one bats an eye.”

Felix chokes on his food as Dimitri says ‘ _courting’ — goddess, it’s like Felix is some princess_ — and Dimitri hastily passes him a cup of water.

Sylvain laughs, disbelieving. “That’s because you’re the _King_ , Dima! This is the scandal of a century!” he exclaims, but the manic grin on his face makes it obvious he is completely relishing in Felix’s embarrassment. “You know, back when we were students, Claude and I started a betting pool for how long it would take for you two to finally get together—“

Felix is quite ready to punch Sylvain in the face but Ingrid quickly interrupts before he gets the chance.

“I, for one, think this will be good for the Kingdom,” she says sagely, though the amused glimmer in her eyes is also evident, just more respectfully hidden than Sylvain’s. “It’s high-time people stop marrying for Crests. It’s such an outdated concept. What better way to start the change than with the King himself?”

“I agree,” Mercedes nods along, “I hope you guys have a nice, pretty wedding. I’ve always wanted to go to one!” 

Annette gasps, chiming in. “Wait. You _will_ have a wedding, right? Or will you guys be, like, a secret forbidden love that the history books will write about forever and ever, after you die?”

Ashe’s eyes light up. “The King and his closest knight…” he ponders aloud, “that would make a great novel.”

Dimitri looks overwhelmed and elated, all at once. (Felix looks like he wants the ground to swallow him whole.) “Well, I… haven’t thought that far. The lords will certainly be displeased about the whole arrangement, so there’s that to deal with first. And truthfully, I’ve never been one for such grand festivities,” he chuckles softly, peering over at Felix. His hand rests on Felix’s knee, under the table, and Felix jumps. “But, of course, if Felix wants a ceremony of some sort…”

Felix is going to choke on his damn steak again. “I—shut up, I don’t know,” he murmurs, blushing, sounding sharper than he’d wanted to, but Dimitri just smiles at him, his thumb rubbing circles on Felix’s knee. “Can we all just focus on _winning the war_ first?”

“No matter what happens,” Dedue speaks up, his quiet voice rippling through the chatter, “you should consider having even a small celebration. In Duscur, marriages aren’t things bound by laws or government. Just between people, their friends and their families.”

He smiles then, first at Dimitri, and then at Felix — a small, kind smile, that Felix isn’t sure he’s ever seen on Dedue’s face. Not directed at himself, at least. But for some reason, it drums up a distinct, calming warmth in Felix that he can’t help but try and smile back.

The moment shatters when Sylvain leans back in his chair and says, theatrically, “A Fraldarius falls in love with his Blaiddyd. Now, that’s a headline for the paper, right there.”

“Eat your fucking steak before I kill you and turn _you_ into dinner for the next demonic beast we fight,” Felix shoots back.

“Felix, language,” Dimitri chastises lightly. 

Felix scowls. But underneath the table, he slips his hand into Dimitri’s — rough and warm — and their fingers, wordlessly, lock together.

_the end._

**Author's Note:**

> and then they lived happily ever after and adopted orphaned crestless kiddos :))
> 
> if u got this far, thanks for reading! u can reach me on twitter [@fancyfraldarius](https://twitter.com/fancyfraldarius) ♡
> 
> (someone help me finish maddening classic without crying???? pls?? thank u)


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